“Why Brice? What’s he doing with the Tea Room? Why would my father bother with any of that with everything that’s going on—and why would Brice want to help him?”
Cait broke off corner of the pastry and crumbled it listlessly between her fingers. “What about the Tea Room, then? What’s the point of painting with all this going on?” Then she paused and looked up, her tone bitter as she said the obvious, “Oh, I’ve been stupid, haven’t I? He’s not fixing it up at all. He means to sell it.”
“Don’t blame Brice for that, either.” Elspeth finished pouring the hot water into to the teapot and turned with the steaming kettle in her hand. “Your father told him you knew all about that, too. Said he wanted to sell the place and start thinking about moving down to London to be closer to you. No one questioned that—Donald hadn’t been able to keep up with the place even before he broke his leg.” Elspeth released a sigh. “Honestly, I could strangle that man. Morag should have done it years ago. If I’d been here myself, I might have figured things out sooner, but I’ve been in America with my sister these last three months—she’s finally getting divorced—and I’ve only just gotten back.”
Cait couldn’t wrap her head around it all. “Does everyone believe I wouldn’t have come back? I wouldn’t have just left him—”
“Shh, love. Don’t be hard on yourself. Or him. Your mum was Donald’s rudder the most past of his life. He doesn’t know what to do without her. Then, too, you know how pigheaded he can be. We’ve all let him down. We left everything to Brice, since he seemed to be the only Donald would let in the house.”
“Why?” Kate glanced at her sharply. “And why would Brice even want to help?”
Elspeth expression softened. “I suspect you can answer the last question for yourself if you give it any thought. As for your father, who can tell what’s going on in his head? Maybe it gives him pleasure to see Brice running ragged, working all hours in the garage then trying to put in time at the Tea Shop on top of it, painting and carting the books away to the consignment shops—”
“The books, too?” Cait felt a knot of something cold and hard building and building in her chest.
Elspeth set down the kettle and brought the teapot to the table. “Your father insists he wants it all put back the way it was before your mum began the library. I can see his point. We’ve had more tourists coming and staying lately, but not so many yet that folks are clamoring to buy businesses in the glen. It’d be hard enough for your dad to sell up as a restaurant. No one from outside’s going to understand how important the library is to the glen—or be willing to spend the time or money trying to run it. Once Brice finishes with it, it could be sold as a house or a shop or a restaurant—whatever someone might want it for.”
Cait straightened slowly from her chair. It was all too much to process.
Only two things she knew for certain. She couldn’t go back to London with her father sick, and she couldn’t let the Library and Tea Room close.
Not only had the library been her mother’s passion, it was important to the glen. With the nearest public library too far for most to travel, there wasn’t a child in Balwhither who hadn’t discovered the magic of reading from a book Cait’s mother had picked out for them. The fact that her father was willing to throw that away, and the fact that Brice MacLaren had gone along with the idea, made Cait want to throttle them both. And Brice had not only done that, he’d tried to hide it from her. That was almost worse than anything else he’d ever done.
Simple Words
“One day I will find the right words,
and they will be simple.”
Jack Kerouac
The Dharma Bums
The frosty temperature outside made it impossible to open the windows, but Brice was used to paint fumes. He cranked the heat up to help the paint dry faster and set to work. What he needed, though, was a pot of coffee—the days of working twelve hours straight trying to finish up the Aston Martin on top of squeezing in time helping Donald with the Tea Room renovation had begun to take their toll. Yawning, he forced himself to finish an entire wall so the paint would be even, then he climbed down from the stepladder and headed back to the kitchen to make himself a pot.
The phone rang as he emptied the old filter, wet grounds dribbling across his shoes as well as the floor and counter. He dug his mobile out of his pocket and groaned when he saw that it was Donald Fletcher. “What now, Donald?”
“Is Cait there with you?” Donald’s voice was uneven with a note of panic.
“Why would Cait be here?”
“Because she isn’t here. Where else would she be? She came home early. The bloody phone was downstairs, so I had to wait until she’d gone to bed before I could ring to warn you. Then I discovered her car was gone.”
“She could have driven off somewhere to think. You know how she gets. And I hope you’ve come to your senses and told her the truth.” Brice tore a paper towel off the roll and used it to wipe the floor.
“I’ve no intention of telling Cait anything, so long as you do your part. I won’t have her worrying herself to death for whatever time I’ve got left. She’s been through that with her mum already. Now did you get that FOR SALE sign taken down?”
“Aye, but I wish you’d change your mind. It’s cruel, what you’re doing to her. Cruel, and it will only make her furious, and hurt. That’s the long and short of it. You’re going to hurt her, keeping all these secrets, and that’s what she’ll remember about you as she lays you in the grave.”
“You’re a fine one to talk about hurting her. Anyway, it’s my own business what I tell her, and I’ll thank you to keep your head right out of it. Though when you’ve ever kept your head around our Cait, I can’t remember. But that’s the point. She’s a Fletcher. I don’t want her staying here in the glen, throwing herself away—throwing away her education and her talent—on the likes of you. She’s finally making something of her life, which is more than I allowed for her mother or for Robbie. Now Cait’s all I’ve got left, and I’m determined to see her right.”
“You’re all she’s got left, too, you ruddy great fool. Did you ever think of that?”
Donald growled, his voice deep and sounding momentarily more like his old self. “Don’t you think you can talk to me like that, Brice MacLaren. I’m doing this for her—and don’t forget you promised you wouldn’t say a word. I’ll not have you trying to worm your way back into her life the way you’ve tried to win me over. Come the new year, she’ll be off back to London if I have to drive her there myself.”
In his usual autocratic way, Donald rang off without a good-bye, as if he were the king of the world and everyone else his vassals. But that had always been Donald’s biggest problem with Cait. She didn’t take well to being told what to do, not for anything. Not if you happened to value your piece of mind.
Wishing he’d never made the mistake of promising to stay out of Donald’s relationship with his daughter, Brice tossed the phone down onto the tarp-covered table behind him harder than he’d intended. It landed with a smack and bounced to the floor, and when he reached past a chair that had been left askew, he found that the screen had cracked. The chair slid, and as he scrambled to keep his balance, he banged his head on the underside of the table. He flung the chair aside harder than he’d meant to, too, and it banged into the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the newly painted surface. A dent he was going to have to repair and paint again.
Fists clenched, Brice fought to regain his self-control. He’d tried so hard to be done with anger, and yet here he was again, breaking things instead of mending them. That was just like him, wasn’t it? His own worst enemy. No matter how hard he worked, no matter how hard he tried to be better, it always felt like an uphill battle.
He separated a fresh coffee filter from the ruffled stack and fitted it into the stainless-steel machine on the counter, then he fetched ground beans from the refrigerator, measured them out, and added water.
The machine spit and
sputtered as it began to brew, and while he waited for the coffee to drip, he realized Donald Fletcher had set him up good and proper when it came to Cait. Risked ruining everything Brice had been hoping for. And if—in the deep recesses of his mind—Brice had ever thought that helping Donald would make the stubborn old tyrant soften toward him, he’d long since learned that he’d been mistaken.
Nothing softened Donald Fletcher, not even the prospect of facing death. Since Morag’s passing, Donald had managed to drive most everyone in the glen away, and not even the offers of help when he’d broken his ankle had kept him from being surly.
It might have been different if Elspeth had been around. Elspeth Murray would have noticed he wasn’t leaving his house or going to the Tea Room, and she wouldn’t have been deterred by Donald growling that he didn’t want a fuss. She’d have done exactly what Brice had done, retrieved the key from beneath the flowerpot by the holly tree, seen the state of the place—and the emptiness of the pantry and refrigerator—and taken things in hand herself. Only desperation—and the fact Brice had promised not to say a word to Cait about any of it—had allowed Donald’s pride to accept anything Brice had managed to do for him.
Brice should have known the wily old goat hadn’t told him the entire story. And once the Tea Room had come into it, promise or no promise, Brice should have confessed to Cait.
As it was, he didn’t see how she’d ever forgive him for what he was doing. Never mind for what she thought he’d already done.
Running a calloused hand along the back of his neck, Brice kneaded the rigid muscles as he looked around the kitchen. Gone was the cheery yellow color that Morag had chosen for it, along with the border of heather blossoms that Cait herself had painted. All of the hand-painted borders throughout the house were gone and so were the bookshelves and the books themselves. In Brice’s estimation, Donald’s “improvements” had stripped away all of the charm that added value, until all that remained of the old Library and Tea Room was a blank canvas of a restaurant with a decent kitchen and a dozen empty rooms with no personality at all.
Unable to stand idle any longer, he got a cup from the cupboard and filled it directly from the stream of coffee descending from the machine, added a bit of milk from the refrigerator, and took a cautious sip as he headed back into the room where he’d been painting. After draining half the milky coffee, he left the cup on the floor, dialed up the volume on Niall Horan’s “Slow Hands,” which was playing on the radio, and turned the stepladder to the next wall so he could begin cutting in the paint along the ceiling. The combination of the coffee and the strong beat of the music gave him a bit of energy, and he made himself throw his back into the work. That was what he needed to keep from worrying about Cait. Hard work, sweat, and eventually a bit of sleep.
He didn’t hear the door open—didn’t notice anything but the music and the slap of the paint brush until he bent to load more paint on his brush and saw Cait striding across the floor toward him in the old barn coat of her father’s, her face flushed and her hair crackling with temper. He jumped hastily off the step-ladder and turned to face her.
“What are you playing at?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you call and tell me? Instead you’ve been helping him for four months. Four months! And you couldn’t bother to tell me what was going on? Or that he was selling the place?” She stopped in front of him and jabbed her finger into his chest.
“Easy, Cait. I didn’t know about the cancer myself until this morning. But would you have taken my call if I’d tried? You didn’t return a single message after you left me.”
Cait flushed, but then her eyes narrowed, which again was vintage Cait. “All you had to do was mention his broken leg or say he was selling. Or you could have emailed or gotten someone else to phone me.”
“None of us knew until this morning that you needed to be told! The old sod said you were busy working. Which was the truth, wasn’t it? So far as it went, at least.” Easing away from her, Brice started to flick the radio off so they wouldn’t have to raise their voices, but then he thought better of it.
Cait needed to shout. He needed to let her shout.
She didn’t, though. She went quiet instead. “You knew when you saw me earlier. The whole time we were talking, you knew and you hinted and you kept the truth from me. I’d thought better of you than that, though I don’t know why. Lord knows, you can’t handle the difficult things. You never could.”
He had thought he’d grown past being stung by words, but somehow the people Brice loved best had always managed to hurt him the most. Probably because they were the ones who knew where to strike the hardest blows.
“Hold on, Cait,” he said as she turned to leave. Just once, he wished he could find the right words, the perfect words for her. “Your father begged me not to tell you. He begged. I’ve never seen him like that, so I promised him I would leave things for the two of you to sort out on your own.”
“He was trying to keep you away from me. Obviously. But why were you helping him at all? Why would you help him do this?” She waved her hand at the empty room, the pale and lifeless walls. “How could you help him do it when you know what the library meant to my mother? All the time and love she put into this place.”
“You left him. Same as you left me. He said you were busy and didn’t care—”
“And you believed him?” The words were angry, but Cait’s chin wobbled, the way it did when she was fighting to be brave, refusing to let the tears come.
Brice couldn’t help reaching for her, pulling her into his arms to comfort her, the way he’d done a hundred times. “He didn’t have anyone else to help him, love, and he was ready to try doing it all himself. You know how he is. He would have killed himself trying.”
She stood rigid in his embrace, but only for a moment. Then the tears came fast and hard, and she burrowed into his chest as if that would muffle the sound and hide the show of weakness. She was like her father in that, how much she hated anyone to see her vulnerable.
In Brice’s arms, she felt warm and familiar and right. Every muscle, every cell in his skin, remembered the curves and hollows of her, the softness that she tried to hide from everyone. As much as he’d told himself there was no guarantee—no matter how hard he worked or what he managed to achieve—that she would ever come back to him, he had never stopped hoping. He breathed deeply now, memorizing the new scent of her, the shampoo that smelled more sophisticated, the perfume she had never used before.
“I can’t lose everything. I can’t lose everyone,” she said, raising her face to look at him.
“You haven’t,” he said, hoarsely. “Not everyone.”
Briefly, he thought he saw recognition and even a hint of hunger in her eyes, the same hunger that he was feeling. Lowering his head slowly, he gave her time before his lips met hers. He felt the warm of her breath, barely brushed the pillow softness of her mouth . . .
At the last second, she wrenched away.
“Don’t,” she said, and her voice was ragged. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He didn’t know what to tell her. What did she want to hear? What could he possibly say that would make them—the two of them—all right again?
“I’m apologizing, Cait. That was an apology kiss.” He caught both her hands and brought them against his chest. “You know I’ve never been good with words. I’ve made mistakes, a lot of them, but I’m hoping you’ll forgive me, or at least hear me out. Give me the chance to tell you what happened that day. Let me show you I am changing.”
Moments, long and tense moments, went by. Her expression softened slowly, as if the anger she’d been bottling up was finally seeping away. Then she pulled her hands away from his and raised one to briefly cup his cheek.
“I can’t. Especially not after you helped my father lie to me,” she said.
Cowardice
“It took a queer sort of courage
to admit to cowardice...”
George R. R. Martin
Cait had examined her own behavior a thousand times, every stupid thing she’d ever done. She’d been willful and naive and defiant at times in her life. She’d been selfish, too. Until this moment as she turned away from Brice and rushed toward the door, she had never knowingly been a coward. Even so, she had to admit that it was cowardice that made her run from him, that kept her from kissing him the way her heart and body longed to kiss him despite her better judgement.
How could he still make her feel like this? He had only to look at her, to touch her, and she forgot all common sense, forgot that she had more important things to think about than an attraction that refused to die.
She couldn’t let herself forget. Not for a single minute.
Only when she was safely near the doorway and well out of reach did she stop and look back. He was still watching her, his face raw with the little boy loneliness that had made her fall in love with him in the first place.
She couldn’t let that stop her. “I won’t let him sell this place,” she said. “The glen needs the library, so I need you to put everything back. The shelves, the books, the paint. Everything.”
He moved toward her with the brush in his hand, the overhead lamps casting his shadow ahead of him on the old wooden floor. “It’s too late for that. The stencils you and your mother painted are already painted over in most of the rooms. I’m sorry, Cait. The painting’s nearly finished, and I’ve taken the shelves and the books down to the consignment fair in Edinburg. I know for a fact the shelves have sold already—someone bought half of them before I even got the final lot delivered.”
The blows just kept coming. More of the things Cait’s mother had done, things they had done together, simply vanished as if they’d never been.
Magic of Winter Page 4